Abstract

The Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematogräficos (ICAIC) was the first cultural institution to be created by the new Cuban revolutionary government in 1959. One of its aims was to create a revolutionary cinema to suit the needs of the Revolution in a climate of transformation and renewal. At the same time, issues of gender equality and gender relations became extremely important in a revolution attempting to eradicate some of the negative social tendencies of the past.

This thesis brings together these two extremely significant aspects of the Cuban revolutionary process by examining issues of gender and gender relations in six Cuban films produced by ICAIC from 1974-1990; a period of dramatic change and development in both Cuban cinema production and in Cuban civil society. The films are: De cierta manera, Retrato de Teresa, Lejania, Hasta cierto punto, ¡Plaf! (o demaiado miedo a la vida), and Mujer transparente.

The thesis argues that the portrayal of aspects of gender relations in Cuban cinema developed along a progressive path from expressions of the modern to expressions of the postmodern, closely following a cultural transition in the nation as a whole. This does not mean that there occurred an absolute rejection of all the principles of what it meant to be `modern', but that, in the latter half of the 1980s, expressions of the postmodern can be seen through the prism of gender relations in the films produced during the latter part of the period concerned.

One of the goals of this thesis is to illustrate how, through the prism of the gender debate presented on film, analysed using a number of theoretical approaches, Cuban cinema both reflected and produced some of the central ideological concerns on the island during this period. It will be possible to see how the gender debate both helps to create and, at the same time, makes reference to, more general cultural debates on the island. As such, the issues around gender explored through Cuban cinema can be seen as one of the most important cultural topics of this period.